Obama bombs: Syria and now Summers?

Mr. Summers’s reputation is replete with evidence of a temperament unsuited to lead the Fed. He is known for cooperation when he works with those he perceives as having more power than he does, and for dismissiveness toward those he perceives as less powerful. Those traits would be especially destructive at the Fed, where board members and regional bank presidents all bring their own considerable political power and intellectual heft to the Fed’s decision-making on monetary policy and financial regulation. Putting Mr. Summers in charge would risk institutional discord or worse, dysfunction.

His record on financial regulation is abysmal, and he has not acknowledged the errors. In the late 1990s, Mr. Summers was instrumental in deregulating derivatives and in repealing the Glass-Steagall banking law. He has said that the resulting financial crisis was unforeseeable, which is wrong. He waged public battles against regulators who correctly argued for regulating derivatives and disparaged the comments of a prominent economist who early on identified risks in the too-big-to-fail banking system. This is precisely the wrong background for the next Fed leader, who will take charge in the middle of the delayed rule-making for the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

More recently, as the top economic adviser to Mr. Obama in the first term, Mr. Summers only belatedly supported reforms under the Volcker Rule to curb bank size and recklessness, a rule that still has not been put in place. Under the law, the next Fed leader is supposed to work with other regulators to dismantle big banks on the verge of failure, rather than prop them up. Given his background, Mr. Summers would be more likely to use the implicit and explicit powers of the Fed to shield and preserve the too-big-to-fail system.

Mr. Summers has also shown an indifference to the effects of economic decisions on ordinary people — the opposite of what is needed in a Fed leader at a time of high unemployment. He advised the president to support a stimulus that other economists correctly warned was too small. He resisted bankruptcy relief for underwater homeowners that would have forced banks into mortgage modifications — even as the administration spared no expense to bail out the banks.

Senators who have endorsed Ms. Yellen would do well to let Mr. Obama know, either publicly or through back channels, that their endorsement translates into a no vote for Mr. Summers.